


all the more reason

by norgbelulah



Category: Bourne (Movies)
Genre: Cigarettes, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Sleep Deprivation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-17
Updated: 2012-12-17
Packaged: 2017-11-21 08:30:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/595640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/norgbelulah/pseuds/norgbelulah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pam has a not entirely unexpected visitor at her undisclosed location.</p>
            </blockquote>





	all the more reason

**Author's Note:**

  * For [7iris](https://archiveofourown.org/users/7iris/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide! I hope you enjoy!

During the shitshow that is her hearing before the congressional oversight committee, they house her--and her cadre of armed guards--in a three bedroom colonial next to a nameless lake, in a nameless suburb of D.C.

They don’t tell her where it is and she doesn’t ask. They don’t blindfold her during transport, but the glass in the vehicles is always dark and she’s looking at her phone half the time anyway. She has no one she wants to contact, no one who can help her now. 

If they convict her of anything, she’ll do her time and pay her price. She’s not sorry for the things she’s done. She’s tired of trafficking in secrets. She wants a clean slate and a clear mind. So she doesn’t care where they put her and she doesn’t mind not knowing.

It doesn’t surprise her at all, however, that Bourne tracks her down.

They let her sit by herself on the dock in the evenings. She smokes a cigarette and listens to a portable radio play whatever it can catch through the static.

There is no moon on the night that she hears a quiet churning of the water. She knows there are no fish in it, not ones that big. The shadows are too dark to make him out, but she thinks she hears a soft breath or two rise from below the dock. She would never have heard it, though, if she hadn’t been half expecting him at some point.

She taps out her cigarette and says, “The one at the back door has a new girlfriend who texts him more than she ought to.”

She pulls her feet from the water and scoops up her shoes and the radio. 

As she walks up to the house, the radio plays snatches of an old Beach Boys tune. 

_...kept my mouth shut...I started......can’t back down...pushed......too far_

The song is over when she reaches her bedroom. She turns the volume down as the last round of _don’t worry, baby_ crackles out. She doesn’t turn on the light.

He’s just a dark shadow under the open window, sitting with one leg splayed, the other bent at the knee, arm not-quite carelessly draped over it. 

His eyes must be closed, or she would be able to see the whites reflected, even without the moon.

“Did you find what you were looking for?” she asks. It’s been months. He must have looked.

“It wasn’t there anymore.” His voice is tired.

She sets her shoes down on the floor. “You should be out of the country, then.” He must know they’re still looking for him.

“Did you know they terminated all the programs?” he asks. “Even the contracts. Hundreds are dead.”

She’s not surprised, but she does swallow a gasp and it strangles in her throat. 

Lives lost, because of what they did. Some would say thousands more in future, failed missions. She’s never doubted her reasons for sending those documents, for doing what she did for Bourne--for David. But she’s never weighed the repercussions in this particular light before.

She knows she’d do it again, in a heartbeat, she would. Secrets could save lives, but secrets like the ones Treadstone and Blackbriar were built upon only foster more secrets and still more death to keep them.

“All the more reason to leave,” she says after a long silence.

He doesn’t answer.

She sits down on her bed, still facing him. She folds her hands in her lap and tilts her head. He’s still tucked in darkness, his face unreadable. “I could tell them you’re here.”

“You won’t.”

“Why?”

“Because you like them. Or most of them. You don’t want me to kill them. Or maim them.” His speech is short, the words clipped like he hasn’t strung many sentences together lately. She frowns.

“So you’re not here to come in?”

His shoulders tense. He’s thought about it, at least.

“May I turn on the light?” She indicates the lamp to her right, at the side of the bed.

When he doesn’t say ‘no’, she leans over and flips the switch. The bulb spreads a soft yellow across the pallor of his skin. There are dark circles under his eyes, which he squints in the light, slow to adjust. He turns his head slightly away.

“Are you sick?”

“I just haven’t eaten for a while.” He’s thinner than when she saw him last.

“That seems unwise.”

He frowns, shifting in his seat on the floor. She wants to get him up from there, but she doesn’t think he’ll come. “Things have been... harder,” he says. “People know my face. You know. It was on the news. There--there was someone in Missouri who might have--but they were looking for me there. He would have turned me in.”

“You’re sure of that?”

He blinks, then shakes his head as though trying to get rid of something. “He always... liked--always followed the rules. I think.” He says nothing for another long moment and she doesn’t know what to do, until he speaks again, as though he never stopped. “Parsons. They put her in witsec. I couldn’t--”

And there he breaks off and she understands. He has no one. He needs someone.

“This might as well be witsec,” she murmurs.

“But it’s not. You’re still out there. Taking responsibility, trying to fix it.”

“Is that what you want to do?”

He shakes his head fervently. “I-I want it to not have been broken at all. I want--I keep having these dreams,” he says, brokenly. “Everytime I close my eyes, I live a different life.”

She takes a breath, tries to calm herself, to think.

“What should I call you?” she asks.

He looks up at her, eyes wide. “It hardly matters,” he tells her in a small voice.

“It does,” she insists.

He presses his lips together, looks away, then back at her. “David,” he says. “I’m not--I don’t want to be--”

“David,” she says softly and he breaks off, almost startled. “I know.” She smiles at him, though it’s very likely strained.

He looks around the room now, as though seeing it for the first time, as though he’d only looked as far as the exits and the usable weapons until that very moment. “Do they check on you?”

“Only if they hear something, or if I call,” she says and he nods. “When was the last time you slept the night through?”

He meets her eyes. “I could have ten days ago. I haven’t since before Marie--” He looks away when he can’t finish the sentence. 

“Do you want to give it a try here?” She figures he wouldn’t appreciate her vocalizing how terrible he looks, so she just frowns again so he knows she’s thinking about it and feels genuine concern.

“I’m not taking your bed from you.”

“There’s another hearing tomorrow,” she tells him, certain he already knows. “I won’t sleep anyway.” She stands, pulling her cigarettes from her pocket. She walks to the window. She stops next to him, says, “Excuse me,” and perches on the wide sill once he moves aside.

He looks up at her, almost bewildered, as she lights up. He’s left the window slightly cracked for her. She raises her brows. She says, cig hanging from her mouth, her one indulgence in trying times, “Go ahead.”

She turns her head away from him, looking out the window and down towards the lake, blowing smoke into the breeze. She barely hears him move, but she’s sure he does. 

The light clicks off behind her and she waits until she finishes the smoke to turn back around. He’s taken off only his shoes, which he’s left at the foot of the bed. He’s asleep, or appears to be, his mouth slightly parted, his hands bunched up in the pillow under his head.

Pam lights another cigarette. She watches over him through the night.


End file.
